


wanna be your fountainhead

by thescrewtapedemos



Category: Electronic Dance Music RPF, G-Eazy (Musician) RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1910s, Alternate Universe - Prohibition Era, M/M, Speakeasies, minimal research maximal bullshit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 16:22:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12774840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thescrewtapedemos/pseuds/thescrewtapedemos
Summary: So it goes like this: two L.A. transplants light up the New York sky and drink a lot of wine and kiss a little, sometimes.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> probably going to be connected drabbles because am i willing to commit to longform gerald eazy fic? no. also, listen, i know, but he has the personality of wet cardboard so i took some creative licenses. title from good intentions by paper route. enjoy 
> 
> xoxo

He crosses the bridge in spring. 

Manhattan, he knows, is symbolic. Harlem is the heart of the city; the beating, rhythmic heart of her, spilling blood and booze down the veins of the streets, breathing jazz in the smoky bellows of her lungs. Manhattan's symbolic but he's forever a fool for the sucker’s bet, and the stack of cash in his pocket got him this far. It's going to stretch as far as he needs it to go. An island, a glittering crown. 

He plans to take the whole damn thing. 

“Manhattan Island,” he tells the cabbie and settles back to watch the lights off the dark waters. 

The traffic hurts to crawl through but it gives him time to look his fill, the glitter of it all like a mirage he can reach out and touch. There’s time, time to feel out the razor of appetite in his gut, the hawkish need of it. The parching in his throat. 

“Where's a guy go to get a drink around here?” he asks and the cabbie startles, dark eyes suddenly evaluating in the rearview mirror. 

Gerald lets them play over him. Smiles into it. Cabbie instincts are cabbie instincts, Los Angeles or New York. They'll read him as what he is. 

“Y'all wanna head to Gerald’s,” the cabbie says at last, accent strong enough to mangle. “Ask for Gerald.”

“Gerald, no shit?” Gerald asks and he's laughing because the city's already magic, tonight. The cabbie eyes him but keeps his peace. “Owner's name?”

“Owner's named Dillon,” the cabbie says and shrugs. “Thinks it's funny or summat.”

Gerald hums. 

“Head there,” he says after a beat of consideration. He'll take a sign when it's handed to him. A bar named Gerald's. 

He's still laughing as the cabbie takes him over the bridge.

* * *

Gerald’s is a dingy door in an alcove that’s a little too watched on a street a little too crowded for how far downtown it is at this time of night, and Gerald watches it for a beat. Smokes contemplatively and taps his ashes onto the pavement and marks out the others watching from the street corners. People that watch a little too long. People with bulges in their coat pockets he makes out easy. 

Not cops. Too easy on their feet to be cops, and the shoes are too dirty. Mob, then, and Gerald grins slow. 

The door opens to a quiet room paneled in scuffed wood and it’s a barber shop in almost every aspect except that if this place makes its bank from haircuts he’d hand over all the money in his pocket, which is to say all of his worldly possessions at the moment. 

He grins at the man with his boot up on the counter with the till, glancing at him over his newspaper with a disinterest all falsity and careful observance. 

“What can we do for you,” the man asks, all drawling syllables, eyes dragging from Gerald’s shoes back to his eyes, “ _sir_.” 

Gerald doesn’t bother taking offense. He’s here on something almost an undercover mission, no intention of making an impression. Feeling out the competition, touching his fingertips lightly to the scene before he goes in for the kill. He’s hardly dressed to impress. 

“I’m here to see Gerald,” he says, pitches his voice for confidence and smiles even wider when the man’s eyes go over him again, sharper this time. 

“Don’t gotta bother the owner at this hour, if you need a haircut,” the man says and his eyes are sticking this time to Gerald’s hair with something almost like genuine interest. “Which, fella, I get that it’s the style these days, but…” 

Gerald runs his fingers through his hair and his smile becomes something perilously close to sincere. 

“Thanks kindly for the concern,” he says, friendly irony. “Really, just here to speak with Gerald.” 

The man shrugs, rustles his newspaper and rolls a shoulder in the direction of the door to the backroom. 

“Last door at the end of the hall,” he says and glances up one last time through his lashes. “You’re late for a night like this, y’know.” 

“Just stopping by for a tick,” Gerald says but he’s already to the door and neither of them are paying attention anymore. He’s following the trail of something not quite a smell, something right on the edge of hearing. A hint of possibility, a tinge of cigarette smoke. 

He can hear the jazz beat before he even gets the door open. 

He steps through and the music spills over him like a wave. Warm and heavy like honey, a raspy voice crooning its way through the octaves, a swing beat he can feel trying to tease its way into his heartbeat. 

The place smells of dancer’s sweat and cigarettes and whiskey. 

He pauses in the shadow of the doorway again, ignores the broad man glaring at him over thick, heavy crossed arms, and pulls in another lungful of the scent, testing the feel of it crossing his tongue. 

It’s a jazz club, and he’s been in plenty of those. It’s nothing special, not to look at, but there’s something about the buzz of the place that has his heart hopping along to the ragtime swing starting up in the background. A little fast, a little flirtatious, and he grins and nods his way through the throngs of people he knows he’ll make recognize him eventually all the way to the bar. 

The barman’s polishing glasses and ignoring the room, consummately professional. He doesn’t even glance up when Gerald sidles over. 

“Here to see Dillon,” he tells the barman, which isn’t a lie so much as a misdirection. The man barely looks at him anyway, hooking a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the man leaning against the end of the bar. 

Gerald hadn’t even seen him at first, eyes sliding right over him. Dillon blends well, he notes as he nods to the barman and steps away. 

Tall but not very, handsome but unremarkable. Neat beard, clothes on the flamboyant side but only just. Blending into the crowd, into the bar behind him. A native creature, at home, unremarkable except in that he’s picked the vantage point that serves best to see all the room and every one of the obvious exits. 

He’s sipping from a wine glass and his cheeks are pink but his hands are steady and when Gerald settles onto the stool next to him the gaze flashed onto him is sharper than Gerald had expected. 

“Hi,” Dillon offers, insolent, the _Can I help you?_ almost veiled enough to be polite. “And you are?” 

“New in town.” 

The words surprise a laugh from him, enough to get him to set his glass aside. Gerald watches the turn of pale, soft wrist as the glass tinkles against the wood, uniquely sharp against the flow of the music. Red wine, sloshing softly in the glass. A sipping drink. 

It’s an in. Gerald is seeing Dillon the same way Dillon is watching him, and he wonders if Dillon’s clocked him for what he is yet. He hopes so. 

“Dillon,” he says and offers Gerald a hand to shake. A strong hand, no pretense at a show of strength to it. He lets go easy, head tilting, looking up at Gerald through his lashes like he doesn’t even know what he’s doing. “But you seem to know that.” 

Gerald wants to laugh. 

“I got directions,” he offers, the bare bones of an explanation but Dillon seems to pick it up anyway. His smile is suddenly wider, flashing with wicked humor. He blends in, Gerald thinks, but only when he doesn’t look too close, because suddenly he’s all Gerald can look at. 

“You got a name to go with those directions?” Dillon asks, heavy insolence, just a hint disingenuous. 

Gerald isn’t exactly proud of how that’s what makes his mouth driest, but he doesn’t precisely care to feel guilty about it, either. 

“Gerald,” he settles on, a truth he hadn’t expected to hand out so soon, and Dillon lights up like Christmas. 

“No shit?” he asks and when Gerald tilts him a wink he laughs again. It tips his head back, his eyes closing with it. His cheeks are still pink. His mouth is red, stained with wine and flush. It looks soft. 

Gerald pulls his eyes away because fucking the owner of the first establishment he’s walked into in New York probably isn’t the entrance he should be going for, even if he suddenly wants it with a capricious ache. 

“No shit,” he confirms, easy, curls his mouth into what is for all intents and purposes a smile. “S’on my birth certificate and everything, if you’re of a mind to check.” 

“I’ll take your word,” Dillon says and picks his glass back up. 

Gerald isn’t watching him but he can feel Dillon’s eyes on him over the rim of his glass. Sharp, a little too warm. Interested and knowing, and exciting for it. Gerald lets himself look back because why the fuck not. 

“Nice to meet you, Dillon,” he says softly and Dillon grins. Shocking white teeth against the careful trim of his beard, the dark wood of the smoky bar. He doesn’t look away as he drains the glass, doesn’t blink. 

“I think I’ll be seeing you around,” he replies softly, “Gerald.” 

And then he’s up, leaning past Gerald to rap on the wood of the bar for the barman’s attention. He stays there as he waits for the barman to sidle over, pressed so close to Gerald’s side he can practically taste his cologne, the salt of sweat gathering at the dip of his collarbone, the wings of his shoulders. 

“Whatever his next drink is, on the house,” he says and then he’s gone and Gerald is watching him go, swaying between the patrons, leaving something like magic in his wake with every arm he touches carefully, every word whispered in an ear. 

“Whiskey, double, no ice,” he orders without looking and downs it when the glass is slid across to him.

* * *

The hotel is simple and inexpensive; Gerald has nothing to prove yet, and no attention he particularly wants to attract. The night clerk, a bored teenager, bags under his eyes Gerald respects, hands over the key without even looking at him. 

He gets a top floor suite, takes the elevator up and walks straight to the window. He yanks the curtain across and the lights of the city blaze down around him and he drinks his fill of them. Looks and looks at all he hopes to gain, and thinks about how it’s all at the tips of his fingers. 

He turns away when he feels so full up that it presses like diamonds against the back of his eyes, throws his little bag onto the sheets and strips methodically. 

He jerks off thinking about Dillon's mouth. 

Pink, pretty, dark with the flush of drink. He thinks of it wrapped around the mouth of the wine bottle, the way his throat worked when he'd sipped his drink, fearless, a spark like matches in Gerald's gut. He thinks of Dillon's smile. The bright, sly mischief of it. 

He thinks of Dillon on his knees, the collar of his shirt askew. Tightens his grip on his cock and thinks about whether Dillon makes noise when he comes, whether he'd gasp, cry out, be utterly silent. Gerald wants to know. 

His eyes are on the dazzle of the city but his thoughts are of Dillon as he comes, paints his fist hot and white.


	2. Chapter 2

He finds Dillon curled up under the bar, a hand curled around the body of a dusty wine bottle, head resting against the cool metal of the icebox. 

He wakes with a startle when Gerald gets a hand in his hair and pulls gently. A jolt, the bottle clattering away across the floor, pupils holes in the terrified glint of the white of his eyes. He’s scrambling back against the wood of the bar, shoving to get away from whatever his dreams have conjured to follow him into reality. 

Gerald’s on his knees with a thump and a burst of pain, but he ignores that. Dillon doesn’t fight him when he gets his arm around his waist and starts hauling him back out from under the bar. 

“I fell asleep?” Dillon asks and his voice is a wreck. He’d been yelling all night when Gerald had lost track of him in the throng of the crowd. Spinning from group to group as he does best, a blur of mania and energy Gerald only sees still when he’s truly spent. 

He works so hard for them. Gerald hums and helps nudge Dillon up to his knees and balances him up to his feet. 

“Yeah, baby,” he says and Dillon grins blearily. 

“Helluva party,” he says, confiding, still barely awake. Almost heartbreakingly honest. “Our best.” 

“Yet,” Gerald reminds him and gets his arm around Dillon’s waist, supporting him on their wobbly voyage around the end of the bar. 

The party is all over but the stragglers now. The sun is coming up about the skyscrapers, it must be nearly six in the morning. The last bottle of champagne had popped an hour ago, the singer taking her final bows. Gerald hasn’t slept yet, hasn’t really slept in almost a day. He’s running on fumes, the sway of exhaustion blending with the sway of the wine he’s been sipping all night, the sway of Dillon’s body against his. 

“Best yet,” Dillon echoes, and his head lolls over so his lips are brushing the corner of Gerald’s jaw. “Fuck, Ger, I’m so fuckin’ hungover.” 

Gerald laughs, tries to keep it low because the threads of insidious ache are needling in from the corners of his vision too. The price they pay, the price they keep paying. It’s worth it. Gerald presses his tongue against the back of his teeth to chase the sour sting of wine

“You’re still drunk, baby,” he murmurs and Dillon’s laughter vibrates through his chest and against his jaw. 

“That _too_ ,” he murmurs and the brush of his lips against Gerald’s skin is infuriating

The crew Dillon hired weeks ago for cleanup is trickling in, righting tables and collecting the corks rolling across the floor. Glass crunches under Gerald’s foot and he grins wolfishly into the dimness, eyes slitted against the light from the door. 

A party to celebrate the haul he’d gotten across the border last time. Gallon on gallon, bottle on bottle muffled in heavy cloth, sloshing quietly in the backseat of the car Gerald had driven across the bridge with a smile to the city and a wave to the people in it he brings libations to every night. Enough for Dillon’s smokey, gilded little joint to mill out patrons for a month. 

A heady month of the two of them, drunken lords of the flappers and wets. A month where the danger isn’t at his heels but beyond their door, where Dillon is in his hands and safe there. 

He guides Dillon up the stairs, to the little apartment he spends barely enough time in to call home. The bar floor is more home to both of them, the little office in the back, the tables and stage. All of it theirs. The bed he settles Dillon onto doesn’t feel half as real. 

Dillon’s hand finds his shoulder, traces over the smooth bump of bone, catches for a moment on his suspender and tucks into his collar. Warm skin against the hollow of his throat, Dillon’s eyes shining in the dark. Below them someone is singing, cracked and rough and nothing like the polished divinity of their nightly jazz singer. 

It’s perfect. 

“Get me outta these,” Dillon demands, bratty, and even that is perfect. So perfectly himself. He wiggles against the sheets, squirming and somehow wiggling free of his jacket. “Fuck, lemme out of this shirt, I _swear_.” 

He quiets when Gerald gets the jacket out of the way, starts in on the buttons of his undershirt. Looks up at Gerald and his eyes are clear like glass. 

“Such a belle,” Gerald mocks softly and Dillon grins, loose and satisfied and glowing against the sheets. 

“Kiss me, then,” he whispers back and it’s all the conspiracy of a run in the dark, the adrenaline burn of an agent crashing through the door to the bar, the cry of Gerald’s heartbeat all for him. 

He kisses Dillon and he tastes of whiskey and cigarette smoke.


End file.
